


letting you sink in

by artificialromance



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: (bc there's a flashback to their childhood), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 03:35:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17134232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artificialromance/pseuds/artificialromance
Summary: I know all of our parents are murderers, and they’ve all done terrible things, but even before I knew that, my dad was a bad guy. When I was really little, I wanted to believe he was still one of the good guys. When I was less little, I stopped. I knew he was a bad guy.”“What do you mean a ‘bad guy’?” Gert says softly. He knows she isn't dumb.“I thought you already knew.”“Knew what, Chase?”His stomach stirs a little. He didn’t think he’d have to spell it out. “Do you remember how we used to climb that tree in the park by the school?” He tells her about one of those days. The memory washes over him.___fix-it where chase opens up to gert about his father's abuse bc I Needed it





	letting you sink in

Gert sighed as she climbed under the covers to join him on the bed. It had been a long day. To be fair, every day was impossible long, and every single one of them was beyond exhausted, but that didn’t make it any easier going to bed every night, trying not to confront the reality of their lives these days. So yeah, he empathized with that sigh.

They lay there in silence for a while, both clearly restless. His eyes were open. He couldn’t tell if hers were. He had a guess, though.

“How aren’t you, like, affected by all of this?”

Chase knit his brows together. “What do you mean?”

“Everyone else is changing. I’m way more anxious, even though that’s due to my unfortunate neurochemical situation, but still. Nico’s always been tough but she’s so much more vocal these days. Karolina’s kind of darkened, a little. Alex is getting more vicious, like his brain is moving faster to make up for our every disadvantage. And Molly…” Gert trails off for a moment. “I feel like every time I look at her, she’s a year older.” She gets quieter. “I wish I could stop it.” Then, she turns back to him. “But you’re still so..so _you_ , way more than the rest of us.”

“Huh,” he says. He knows why. It’s so obvious to him, but he doesn’t want to say too much. A part of him cautions him against saying _anything._ But then he remembers—no more secrets. He couldn’t just lie. He takes a deep breath in.

“I think I didn’t change because nothing changed _for_ me. I know all of our parents are murderers, and they’ve all done terrible things, but even before I knew that, my dad was a bad guy. When I was really little, I wanted to believe he was still one of the good guys. When I was less little, I stopped. I knew he was a bad guy.”

“What do you mean a ‘bad guy’?” Gert says softly. He knows she isn't dumb.

“I thought you already knew.”

“Knew what, Chase?”

His stomach stirs a little. He didn’t think he’d have to spell it out. “Do you remember how we used to climb that tree in the park by the school?” He tells her about one of those days. The memory washes over him.

___

 

_They were in the first grade. He had taught Gert how to climb a tree a few months before, right after the winter defrosted into spring. Now, it was summer, and the sun was hot on their faces, shoulders and knees. School was getting out soon, and a happy buzz filled the daylit early evening._

_“Race you to the top!” Gert demanded, as she took off running. Chase giggled and started after her. Back then, she was faster than him, and her head start certainly didn’t help. She was several branches up by the time Chase reached up to grab his first._

_“Wait up!” Chase yelled up at her._

_“No way! It’s a race, silly,” she called back down at him. He groaned, and tried to rush and catch up. He’s reckless, though, and his side, sore with bruises, bumped into the trunk._

_“Ow!” he exclaimed in pain, sucking air in through his teeth. “Ow, ow,” he said. It hurt, but so did the reminder. He fell from where he was. Luckily, it wasn’t too high and he met the ground feet first, but he was still on the ground, clutching his side._

_“What happened?” Gert said. She stopped where she was and made her way down to meet him. She landed on the grass with agility, and immediately dropped to her knees beside him._

_He opened his eyes and saw her looking down at him, concern written in her wide eyes behind glasses. He was crying, partly from the pain, partly from the shock and half from embarrassment. “Are you okay?” He shook his head._

_Gert looked down at his hand, and tugged his shirt out from where it was tucked into his shorts. Even as a first-grader, Gert had her problems with boundaries. She saw his side littered with red and purple splotches and gasped. “What happened?”_

_“I just—ah—got hit by the tree,” he stuttered._

_“You’re lying.” She pointed at his body. “Some of them are purple-ish, which means your blood vessels already started healing, so they’re from before.”_

_Chase sighs. His tears haven’t stopped, but they’ve slowed down enough for him to speak clearly. “Okay, fine. I…” He pauses, trying to come up with something._

_He knew his dad would make it worse if people found out. Though it was normal to him, he knew it was bad, and he knew Gert would also know it was bad—and if he knew something about Gert, he knew he couldn’t stop her from calling attention to what’s bad so that it would be fixed. This, however, couldn’t be fixed like a classroom bully could. There was no stopping his father—”Man of the year,” millionaire—no one would believe him, except her, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying to get them to._

_“I was fighting bad guys. You know Spider-Man?”_

_“Of course I know Spider-Man.”_

_“He came to my house and asked for my help fighting bad guys. Criminals, on the street in Brentwood.”_

_“There aren’t criminals in Brentwood.”_

_“Yeah, cause Spider-Man and his friends take care of ‘em.”_

_“I thought Spider-Man lived in New York.”_

_“Uh...he’s on summer vacation already. Their summer vacation starts earlier there.”_

_Gert’s face lit up, like she didn’t believe him until he made it through her interrogation. He breathed a sigh of relief that he did. “That’s SO cool! Do you think you’ll see him again? Could I meet him?”_

_“I dunno,” he shrugs. “I don’t think so. It was probably a one-time thing.”_ _  
_ _“Oh. Well, that’s cool still.”_

_“I know. But don’t tell anyone—it’s top secret.”_

_Gert gave him a serious nod. Thank_ God _he got away. He felt bad about lying, but he knew he had no choice. He hopes she’d forgive him if she knew everything. He isn’t sure._

_“Well, luckily you made it out alive, but you still got hurt,” she says. He nods. “You’re really brave, Chase.” He grins up at her._

_Gert leaned down and gave him three little kisses on the area he was bruised at. it tickled, but Chase tried his best not to flinch away. She was really nice to him._

_“Thank you,” he said. “You’re welcome.” Gert took him by the hands to help him sit up._

_“Please don’t tell anyone I cried either.”_

_“Your secrets are safe with me. I’m trustworthy!” She smiled at him. He could only hope that were true._

_____

 

“And it was. You didn’t tell anyone else, so no one else found out. Of course, no one at _all_ knew it was my dad who did that.”

“I remember now that you tell me like that. That was a smooth cover-up for a first grader. I mean, for a horrible reason, but…”

Silence fills the air for a moment. Gert breaks it. “How...often was it? And how bad did it get?”

“When I made a mistake, when he was angry at something unrelated to me, when he was bored. Didn’t matter. Weekly-ish, but there would be breaks. When he would be ‘better.’ For a while, I’d have hope every time that he’d never do it again. And as for how bad it’d get, it’d usually be pretty consistent. Standard bruising. But sometimes it’d get pretty bad. I think I got a fractured rib once. I needed to go to the hospital two or three times, but I only went one of those.” His tone is scary casual, and he knows it. He hopes it isn’t off-putting, but there’s no other way to say it. He’s just talking about his life.

“Oh, my God,” Gert whispered. Chase pretended not to hear that. He couldn’t stomach making her sad, or any more stressed right now.

Chase clears his throat. “It, uh. Sucked, because I knew he wasn’t supposed to be bad, but I knew that he was. I know they say that you learn from what you see growing up and imitate it, but no part of me saw a real dad in the way he treated me, or a real husband in the way he treated my mom.”

“Your mom, too?” He nods. He hated having to tell her, having to explain himself. He always tried to remind himself that he wasn’t weak, but it was hard when he felt it so bad.

A few tears leak down his temples and wet the pillow beneath his head. Wordlessly, he’s met with a soft and gentle thumb on one side of his face, wicking the tears away, then the other side. He doesn’t know why she’s this sweet to him, and it’s enough to make him cry again, but he controls himself.

“My mom was good, but she wasn’t strong. I had to protect her. I started working out in middle school, building muscle so I could put up a real fight back. Sometimes I wish she was. Stronger, I mean.” He sniffs. “But I guess she shouldn’t’ve had to be. Not like that.”

“You’re strong,” Gert says, moving her hand to the top of his head, where she stroked his hair lazily. His chest warms up from her closeness. He’s grateful that she’s there to listen.

“Only because I had to be. It felt a lot more like being a soldier than a hero, though. There was so much fighting, and I didn’t always win—heroes always should. After so many battles, I think a point came where I had lost everything I had left to lose.” His stream of consciousness takes over. “Home wasn’t family. There wasn’t love there, not any that I could feel. It was a war ground. I couldn’t ever relax, really. I had a job to do whenever I was around them, and I was around them all the time. It fucked my shit up on the regular.” He turned to face her. “If that makes sense.”

There’s a little pocket of silence before Gert replies, “I think you’re a hero.” His chest flutters a little at the compliment. She grabs his hand with one of hers. “And even though I don’t inherently need one, because I’m an independent woman who can take care of and protect herself above reasonable expectations for most people, you’re _my_ hero, too. Even though it happens to align with archaic dichotomies of gender, I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Chase chuckles and tilts his head. “Let’s be each other’s heroes, then.”

She smiles. “I’d like that. And I feel like it’s been that way for a while already.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Also, I’m sorry. About everything you went through. I don’t mean to make you feel pitied, and I know it’s a part of your past and there’s nothing I can do about it, but I care about you. A lot. And I am.” She strokes his thumb with her own under their covers.

He usually hates when people say sorry about this—whether it’s therapists, his lacrosse buddies, his coach—but he doesn’t mind when Gert says it. Maybe because he knows when Gert says something, she means it, because she wouldn’t say it if she didn’t. Maybe because he might just actually love her. Either way, it makes him feel better for once. “Thank you.”

Gert brings her other hand up to his face, traces the side of it. He sighs and leans into it. On an decades-old mattress in an abandoned underground mansion, he’s never been so _comfortable._ There are people just above the surface who want him dead, but he’s never felt so safe, or so loved in his life. She leans in to kiss him, and he melts into it. It’s not very long, but not too short either, and a thought crosses his mind; that if being in love had any real meaning at all it had to be this, that maybe love was real if the manifestation of it resembles anything like them together, warm and calm in the eye of a whirlwind of chaos. They pull away, both of their faces tingly, pinker, happier. She’s stolen the words away from him, again. It takes him a moment to find them.

“I think I _have_ changed, though.”

“How so?” Gert asks, still smiling.

“You.”

“ _Me_.”

“Yeah. I said before that I lost everything I had to lose,” he says, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into an embrace. His heart beats a little harder. “I do now.”

**Author's Note:**

> let's also pretend that she never called janet and that she didn't get THAT mad at him for leaving bc she understands the complex and insidious codependency that comes as a result of abusive households xo  
> I love them I'm sad about how his characterization went down this season but the deanoru this season slapped so look out for some of them from me soon (yay)  
> please comment down below if u liked it it means a lot <3 <3


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